Question

How can I tell emacs not to pop up the *Shell Command Output* buffer when calling a shell command like this?

(shell-command MY_COMMAND)

Currently emacs splits the current window into two, showing the (mostly irrelevant) output buffer. To me it would be completely sufficient if I could look it up later if I feel like it.

Answer 1

Maybe using shell-command was the root of the problem. I think I found a solution with call-process which works, although there may be a more elegant way:

(call-process-shell-command
 "cat ~/.emacs.d/init.el"
 nil "*Shell Command Output*" t
 )